in
New York, one predecessor of the modern supermarket, operated from 1915 to 1917. store in
Memphis, Tennessee, the first supermarket, 1918 , 1941 produce and fruit section at
Empress Walk, Toronto, 2012 store with
24/7 service in
Klaukkala,
Finland, 2022
Early history of retail food sales Historically, the earliest retailers were
peddlers who marketed their wares in the streets, but by the 1920s, retail food sales in the United States had mostly shifted to small corner grocery stores. In that era, the standard retail grocery business model was for a clerk to fetch products from shelves behind the merchant's counter while customers waited in front of the counter, indicating the items they wanted. Most foods and merchandise did not come in individually wrapped consumer-sized packages, so the clerk had to measure out and wrap the precise amount desired. Haggling was further complicated by other factors such as the clerk's awareness of the customer's social status and ability to pay. It offered extensive opportunities for social interaction: many regarded this style of shopping as "a social occasion" and would often "pause for conversations with the staff or other customers". Shopping for groceries often involved trips to multiple specialty shops, such as a
greengrocer,
butcher,
bakery,
fishmonger and
dry goods store, in addition to a
general store. Milk and other items of short
shelf life were delivered by a
milkman. During the 1920s, the highly inefficient nature of the American food distribution system meant that the "average urban family spent fully one-third of its budget on food". The vast abundance of cheap, wholesome food which modern consumers take for granted today was simply unimaginable before the middle of the 20th century, to the point that the first American supermarket customers in the 1930s were overcome with emotion at the sight of so much cheap food. Before the 20th century, food was neither cheap, nor wholesome, nor abundant. For example, in 1812, almost 90 percent of Americans worked in food production, and they struggled to stay alive on food which was often scarce, of poor quality, and riddled with diseases which could and did often kill them.
Early experiments in building large stores and chain stores The concept of an inexpensive food market relying on economies of scale was developed by
Vincent Astor, but he was ahead of his time. He founded the
Astor Market in 1915, investing $750,000 of his fortune into a 165′ by 125′ (50×38-metre) corner of 95th and Broadway,
Manhattan, creating, in effect, an open-air mini-mall that sold meat, fruit, produce and flowers. The expectation was that customers would come from great distances ("miles around"), but in the end, even attracting people from ten blocks away was difficult, and the market folded in 1917.
The Great Atlantic & Pacific Tea Company (A&P), which was established in 1859, was an early grocery store chain in Canada and the United States. It became common in North American cities in the 1920s. Early chains such as A&P did not sell fresh meats or produce. During the 1920s, to reduce the hassle of visiting multiple stores, U.S. grocery store chains such as A&P introduced the combination store. This was a grocery store which combined several departments under one roof, but generally maintained the traditional system of clerks pulling products from shelves on request. Saunders was awarded several patents for the ideas he incorporated into his stores. The stores were a financial success and Saunders began to offer franchises. The general trend since then has been to stock shelves at night so that customers, the following day, can obtain their own goods and bring them to the front of the store to pay for them. Although there is a higher risk of
shoplifting, the costs of appropriate security measures ideally will be outweighed by reduced labor costs.
Birth of the supermarket Historically, there has been much debate about the origin of the supermarket. For example,
Southern California grocery store chains
Alpha Beta and
Ralphs both have strong claims to being the first supermarket. By 1930, both chains were already operating multiple self-service grocery stores. To end the debate, the
Food Marketing Institute in conjunction with the
Smithsonian Institution and with funding from
H.J. Heinz, researched the issue. They defined the attributes of a supermarket as "self-service, separate product departments, discount pricing, marketing and volume selling". They determined that the first true supermarket in the United States was opened by a former
Kroger employee,
Michael J. Cullen, on 4 August 1930, inside a former garage in
Jamaica, Queens in New York City. The store
King Kullen, operated under the logic of "pile it high and sell it cheap". Everything displayed for sale in the store "had prices clearly marked", meaning that consumers would no longer need to haggle over prices. At the time of his death in 1936, there were seventeen King Kullen stores in operation. Although Saunders had brought the world self-service, uniform stores, and nationwide marketing, Cullen built on this idea by adding separate food departments, selling large volumes of food at discount prices and adding a parking lot. The armies of
retail clerks who were the public face of the traditionally slow and social retail experience were replaced with repetitive, specialized jobs necessary to operate a modern supermarket. By 1938, A&P had already opened over 1,100 supermarkets. By February 1940, A&P had closed 5,950 grocery stores and cut its percentage of money-losing stores to 18 percent. One sign of the supermarket format's success in slashing labor costs, overhead, and food prices was that the percentage of
disposable income spent by American consumers on food plunged "from 21 percent in 1930 to 16 percent in 1940". Supermarkets rapidly proliferated across both
Canada and the
United States with the growth of automobile ownership and
suburban development after World War II. Most North American supermarkets are located in suburban
strip shopping centers as an anchor store along with other smaller retailers. They are generally regional rather than national in their company branding. Kroger is the most nationally oriented supermarket chain in the United States, but it has preserved most of its regional brands, including
Ralphs,
City Market,
King Soopers,
Fry's,
Smith's, and
QFC.
International expansion By the 1950s, supermarkets had become part of the everyday lives of American consumers, but were still extremely rare outside of the United States. Most persons outside the
United States had never seen a supermarket or even heard of the term. That began to change after 1956, when the
U.S. Department of Agriculture presented an "American Way exhibit" at the International Food Congress in
Rome, Italy. The exhibit included "the first fully stocked supermarket outside of the United States". Supermarket USA featured 4,000 consumer items in a 10,000 square-foot (929 m²) exhibit, "the first fully operational American-style supermarket in a communist country". In
Canada, the largest supermarket chain is
Loblaw, which operates stores under a variety of banners targeted to different segments and regions, including
Fortinos,
Zehrs,
No Frills, the Real Canadian Superstore, and Loblaws, the foundation of the company.
Sobeys is Canada's second largest supermarket with locations across the country, operating under many banners (Sobeys IGA in
Quebec). In the
United Kingdom, self-service shopping took longer to become established, despite its
Special Relationship with the United States. In 1947, there were just ten self-service shops in the country. In 1951, ex-US Navy sailor Patrick Galvani, son-in-law of
Express Dairies chairman, made a pitch to the board to open a chain of supermarkets across the country. The UK's first supermarket under the new
Premier Supermarkets brand opened in
Streatham,
South London, taking in ten times as much revenue per week as the average British general store of the time. Other chains caught on quickly. The number of British supermarkets exploded from roughly 50 in 1950 to 572 by 1961, and finally to over 3,400 by 1969. After Galvani lost out to Tesco's
Jack Cohen in 1960 to buy 212 stores of the Irwin's chain, the sector underwent significant consolidation, resulting in "the big four" dominant UK supermarket chains:
Tesco,
Asda,
Sainsbury's and
Morrisons. In the 1950s, supermarkets frequently issued
trading stamps as incentives to customers. Today, most chains issue store-specific "membership cards", "club cards", or "
loyalty cards". These typically enable the cardholder to receive special members-only discounts on certain items when the credit card-like device is scanned at the checkout. Sales of selected data generated by club cards is becoming a significant revenue stream for some supermarkets.
In the 21st century A report published by the
international organization ActionAid in 2007,
Who pays? estimated that 32 million people shopped in British supermarkets every week. , there were approximately 38,000 supermarkets in the supermarket's birthplace, the United States; Americans spent $701 billion at supermarkets that year; and the American supermarket stood at the pinnacle of a food production and distribution system so efficient that less than three percent of the U.S. population produced
more than enough food to feed everyone. The proliferation of such warehouse and superstores has contributed to the continuing disappearance of smaller, local grocery stores, the
increased dependence on the automobile, and
suburban sprawl because of the necessity for large floor space and increased vehicular traffic. For example, in 2009 51% of Wal-Mart's $251 billion domestic sales were recorded from grocery goods. Some critics consider the chains' common practice of selling loss leaders to be anti-competitive. They are also wary of the negotiating power that large, often
multinationals have with suppliers around the world.
Online-only supermarkets (21st century) During the
dot-com boom,
Webvan, an online-only supermarket, was formed and went bankrupt after three years and was acquired by Amazon. The British online supermarket
Ocado, which uses a high degree of automation in its warehouses, was the first successful online-only supermarket. Ocado expanded into providing services to other supermarket firms such as
Waitrose and
Morrisons. Grocery stores such as Walmart employ food delivery services offered by third parties such as
DoorDash. Other online food delivery services, such as
Deliveroo in the United Kingdom, have begun to pay specific attention to supermarket delivery.
Delivery robots are offered by various companies partnering with supermarkets. Micro-fulfillment centers (MFC) are relatively small warehouses with sophisticated automated rack-and-tote systems which prepare orders for pickup and delivery. Once the order is complete, the customer will pick it up (i.e. "click-and-collect") or have it fulfilled via home delivery. Supermarkets are investing in micro-fulfillment centers with the hope that automation can help reduce the costs of online commerce and e-commerce by shortening the distances from store to home and speeding up deliveries. MFCs are said by many to be the key to profitably fulfilling online orders. ==Types==